These Photos Perfectly Capture The Extreme, Exhausting Lives Of Amateur Bodybuilders

1. Brooklyn-based photographer Brian Finke has been photographing the backstage lives of bodybuilders for 12 years.

2. In 2003, he was assigned him to cover the Mr Olympia competition in Las Vegas.

3. Invented in 1965, Mr Olympia existed basically so that the winners of the Mr Universe competition had somewhere to go beyond Mr Universe.

4. (It’s what the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Pumping Iron is all about – Schwarzenegger’s last competition before retirement, his road to Mr Olympia.